The Collaboratory

What if you could hear your music performed on a 500 year old organ that was once played by J.S. Bach? What if you could invent a new kind of live DJ set with Kyma and live percussion? Or work with an opera singer and a pop singer to develop new ways of transforming the voice in a live performance? What if you could spend several days experimenting with live Kyma-processing of strings, woodwinds, piano, percussion, and other acoustic instruments?

The Collaboratory is a “collaboration laboratory” where you can be part of a team of composers/performers/technologists inventing a new kind of live performance piece, live improvisation, live sound-track-to-picture performance, live DJ set or experimental live interaction involving Kyma and acoustic or electronic performers. The choices are yours, and the possibilities are limitless. Make a proposal and see what happens!

http://kiss2014.symbolicsound.com/the-collaboratory

National Illusion

Javier Umpierrez has just finished the sound design and music for a trailer for Ilusión Nacional, Olallo Rubio‘s upcoming documentary on the history of Mexico’s national soccer team, that conveys the passion and the politics behind the world’s most popular sport.

In the trailer, Umpierrez used Kyma to create and control the vast, powerful crowd sounds as well as other sound design elements. Starting with a recording he made of a full-capacity crowd in Aztec Stadium, he’s been utilizing Kyma’s SampleCloud and controlling pitch and amplitude in real time using Kyma Control on the iPad.

Umpierrez is also doing the score and the sound design for the film itself, so we can look forward to even more awesome crowd effects and inspiring music when the film opens in April 2014.

Petits Personnages

Sound designer Gurwal COÏC-GALLAS was asked to create a language for the little creatures that appear in the newest version of The Beauty and the Beast directed by Christophe Gans. Gurwal used Kyma to create their charming bird-like language (here’s a brief example):

Take your favorite child (whether or not her name is Belle) to see the premiere of The Beauty and the Beast (played, respectively, by Léa Seydoux and Vincent Cassel) on 12 February 2014. You can see what the creatures (called Tadums) look like in the trailer:

Sound design for Beyond Two Souls

We asked sound designer Mathieu Fiorentini of Quantic Dream to talk about how he used Kyma in the sound design for the PS-3 interactive psychological action thriller — Beyond Two Souls — starring Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe:

Throughout the whole game, the player encounters creatures from the other side, called the Entities. We designed the Entities sounds as a team.  For the part of the job that was assigned to me, Kyma helped me a lot to find and propose  layers for the movements and the growls of the creatures. I recorded some collections from the Tau Player, then put the results into the 3DMorphSampleCloud to merge with some human voices. I also got some very exciting results from the 100 Whooshes patch from JED (sound designer, Jean-Edouard Miclot).

In the final chapter of the game, I used Kyma for creatures and ambient sound.  For example:

In this sound, the player is inside a kind of supernatural tempest. So I needed very consistent sound for the ambience. I used the 3DMorphSampleCloud prototype to merge and modulate various sound effects (wind, sand movements, volcano, dogs growl, my voice).

This is the sound made by some weird monsters made from sand particles; they come up from out of the ground to attack Jodie (the main character). I used the CrossFilter prototype to cross human voices and moans with the sounds of wind and gas jets.

I’m new Kyma user (1 year), and I’m so excited about getting deeper and deeper into Kyma. There’s something unusual and magic when I switch on my Pacarana. I know I’m going to spend time dedicated to search and experiment, and I often forget that I’m working on a computer. It helps me to focus only on the most important thing: the sound.

— Mathieu Fiorentini

P.S . Here is the complete list of the Quantic Dreams’ main audio team for Beyond Two Souls:

Alexis Antoni, sound designer
Sylvain Buffet, sound designer
Lorne Bafle, music composer
Xavier Despas, lead sound designer
Mathieu Fiorentini, sound sesigner
Laurent Gabiot, dialog recordist
Mary Lockwood, music manager
Mathieu Muller, sound designer
Stéphane Tréziny, dialog editor
Dominique Voegele, sound designer
Hans Zimmer, music producer

Isikyakar in Ankara

Ilker Isikyakar, sound designer and composer at Cloud18 post production studios in New York, will be in Ankara (Turkey) on 31 October and 1 November to make a presentation on Kyma at the Audio Technologies For Music and Media international Conference (ATMM 2013).

Audio Technologies for Music and Media is an international interdisciplinary conference that focuses on various aspects of audio, audiovisual and music technologies for music and media as well as the relationship between sound, music and image in both ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ media.

Isikyakar will demonstrate how he utilizes Kyma in his work and talk about how Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi‘s nine elements of flow apply to his way of interacting with Kyma. Csikszentmihalyi describes the ‘flow state’ as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one…”

You can read Ilker Isikyakar’s abstract in the ATMM 2013 Program booklet.

John Balcom Scores Big Shot

Composer John Balcom recently completed the score for a new documentary utilizing Kyma as his synthesis tool kit.  BIG SHOT, part of ESPN’s award-winning series 30 FOR 30, tells the story of John Spano’s notorious purchase of the New York Islanders hockey team – which, 4 months after it happened, was exposed as one of the biggest scams in sports history. Directed by Kevin Connolly (E from ENTOURAGE), the film offers the first ever interview with Spano. It’s a pretty incredible story — Newsday called it “a must-watch for anyone with an interest in the power of delusion — both of the self and of others.” The film will be premiering Oct 22nd at 8pm EST on ESPN, and will eventually be available on demand as well as Netflix.

Far more than a sports documentary, the film is, at its core, the story of how a con man pulled off an incredible scam, and much of Balcom’s music speaks to this part of the film. The main instruments used were harp, piano, percussion, and synth, with Kyma supplying most of the synth parts.

When asked why he uses Kyma, Balcom responds, “I find the sound quality second to none. It has become an invaluable tool for me and I find myself using it more and more in my projects.”

A script shaped more by sound than words

“Working from a script shaped more by sound than words, insight comes at us in primal waves. The heart-wrenching sobs, the gut-churning nausea, the keening and, perhaps most profound of all, the silence. It all carries specific meaning.”

This is how Betsy Sharkey, film critic LA Times, describes Hamilton Sterling‘s sound for Morning, a film by Leland Orser with his wife Jeanne Tripplehorn, Laura Linney, Elliot Gould, Kyle Chandler, and Jason Ritter.

Sterling, who is credited as sound designer/re-recording mixer/supervising sound editor on the film, used Kyma to process the transitions to the characters’ memory flashbacks of their child in this tough and unsentimental exploration of a couple’s grief over the loss of their child.

The film opened in LA, New York, and select cities this month and will be available through VOD and DVD for those of us who do not live in “select cities”.

Tobias Enhus featured in Studio Magazine

Tobias Enhus‘ Santa Monica California-based film-scoring studio is featured in the November 2013 issue of STUDIO magazine. You can get a preview of the article through this video in which Enhus gives a demo tour of his unique collection of gear (including a rack with three Pacaranas) presented in Swedish and the universal language of audio gear, all to the soft accompaniment of the glassy, metallic, vocal, analog electronics that have become his signature sound. Near the end of the video, Enhus does an impromptu performance with Max Mathews’ Radio Baton controlling vocal resynthesis in Kyma!

When not composing for film, television, games & advertising, Tobias Enhus enjoys a bit of cave diving.
When not composing for film, television, games & advertising, Tobias Enhus enjoys a bit of cave diving & sleep walking.

The article describes how Tobias was born in Sweden and began by following in his father’s footsteps as a construction engineer before changing course to follow his true passion: music and sound design. Now he is a successful film composer and sound designer in Hollywood, and he has what he describes as a real monster in his sound design studio: “This is my audio playground,” Tobias says, referring to his Kyma system, the programming language considered by some to be the most powerful sound design tool available. Enhus’ Kyma system (his 3-Pacarana rack is among the world’s largest sound computing clusters), along with his Synclavier and analog synthesizer modules, have laid the technical foundation for Enhus’ successes in Los Angeles; his composing credits include the films Narc and the soon-to-be-released feature film Sisterhood of Night, the television series Top Gear and video game Spiderman 3, as well as sound design and music composition for numerous ads for companies like Mercedes and Coca Cola.

The article is full of photos, anecdotes, advice, and insights on the life of a professional composer and sound designer in LA. And it’s an inspiring story for anyone who feels they are expected to take one path in life and is seeking the courage to risk it all in order to follow their dreams.

Matteo Milani: sound designer for Genesis Project

What if it were computers who invented humans (and not the other way around?)  In director Alessio Fava’s new film Genesis Project: the real story of creation, it seems an almost plausible and decidedly amusing hypothesis.  Sound designer Matteo Milani put his Kyma sound design workstation to good use generating the ambiences.  Highly entertaining for all computer users (or is it the other way around?), Genesis Project begs the question, “But what if humans develop self-awareness?”  Be sure to check out the Human User Manual on the official Genesis Project site.

The Book of Sarth

Is it a graphic novel? A concept album? An animation? An App? A book?

The Book of Sarth is all of these things plus a narrative about an ear worm that is, itself, an ear worm! The Book of Sarth is the first example of an entirely new art form for the early 21st century.  The initial offering of the Gralbum Collective, a self-described group of musicians, artists, and programmers working to establish new forms for creative expression, The Book of Sarth is available now in the App Store and has to be experienced, more than described, but an attempt at a verbal description follows:

Imagine discovering an ornate leather-bound book abandoned in an attic; when you pick it up, a voice says “Open the Book”.  Cradling the iPad in your lap like an old tome, flipping through parchment pages with colorful watercolors, it really does feel as if you’ve discovered a magical story book, one where the drawings come alive and music fills the stereo field (headphone listening is strongly recommended for the experimental, Kyma-drenched score by Sarth Calhoun).

Like the tracks on the album, the animated paintings come in “chapters”, each having its own style and character: the storybook water colors of “Discovery”, the ink-on-glass Japanese photo/drawing colorized loops of “Transmission”, the stark black and white ink images of Occupy-like mass protests for “Awakening”, psychedelic pattern loops for “Access”, symbolic poker-hands and other cryptic numbers (4 X 7), beautiful iridescent ghostly animations on black-inked stark background images of the police state, and so on, concluding with an Epilogue of beautiful geometric patterns, sometimes occluded by human silhouettes.

Born into an angular world with no color, two children discover a sound-generating device that enraptures the world, introducing color, movement and shapes; the epilogue hints at ancient technologies that were known to resonate with sounds of a healing nature and reveal hidden order and patterns.  The rest of the narrative is a struggle between the black-and-white (or “the brown and grey”) police state who shut down the transmissions, and the rioting crowds who learn to make their own underground sound-generating devices.

The musical narrative can accompany the visual or not and is an uncompromisingly experimental mix of vocoding, heavily processed poetry, ear-worm inducing loops, exquisitely glitchy electronics, and Euclidean rhythms.  It ends, not with an ecstatic out-of-body experience, but with a warning: “the black days are coming.”